A way to enhance airflow?

Hi,

I've purchased this lovely portable Mac second hand for dirt cheap in good technical condition with some minor dents and scuffs all over the place. I needed a machine that worked great, was very repairable and I didn't care for the visual condition. First thing first, I dismantled the whole thing very thoroughly and washed/dusted every morsel attached to it. I then replaced the spinning drive with a Samsung SSD for speed and cool operation. Also added 16GB of OWC RAM. Finally I removed the DVD drive, since I never use it and I didn't want to lug around the extra weight.

What I found puzzling was the complete absence of any intake air vents.

I've seen that all of the newer MacBook Pros, big or small, have these milled air intake seams at the right and left hand edges of the bottom case. They make perfect sense.

Where does the Early 2011 13" MacBook Pro intake it's air?

Should I decide to do it - would it help the machine run cooler if I milled or drilled some holes on both sides of the bottom case?

I also noticed that it is possible to completely isolate the keyboard assembly from other internals of the computer, which would be useful in case of a spilling accident. I would probably do it with some durable and moisture resistant tape. Would that negatively affect the thermals of the machine at all or should I go for it? If it did, but I also milled or drilled the holes on the bottom case - would those changes make for a better thermal environment in the machine?

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Should I decide to do it - would it help the machine run cooler if I milled or drilled some holes on both sides of the bottom case?

Yes, of course, you just need to do it in the right places. Be aware that most images on the WEB showing drilled Macbooks have the holes in the wrong place because people didn’t understand that the Macbook fan in Centrifugal and didn’t study the Macbook Airflow.

Macbook Pro 13 (2011) - Airflow

Best place to drill air intake holes is on the Blue Arrows. Or Blue+Yellow

Did you check the fan function and change out the thermal paste and change the hard drive/IR cable to a 2012 model? If not do so. Use a keyboard skin for protection. Do not use it in bed or where it can't breath or dissipate heat.

Fan is in good condition. I have not yet changed the thermal paste. It is in my plans. The cable is replaced. I don't like the look and feel of keyboard skins. Is there a reason I shouldn't isolate the keyboard from the bottom?

Be aware though that no matter how much air you blow into it or suck out of it, it's temperature will never be bellow room temperature so if you live in a very hot place there's not much you can do about it - been there, done that, trust me…

The noise would be directly proportional to how fast it is running. You can use smsFanControler to control that - mine runs at the lowest when browsing or such light use then at it's highest for audio/video conversion for instance.

As for connections, split the wires from the original coolers. If it's just this one, won't make an impact, just make sure it's pointing the right way (I would suggest exhaust through DVD port, not intake) and use some good double-sided tape to stick it in place and avoid vibration noises.

Anyway I would frown upon drilling anything. First it's too much work, second you probably won't achieve what you're looking for as the laptop was already designed for the best airflow possible.

Barely remember doing something like this in the past and ended up with a laptop running hotter as the air was no longer going through where it was supposed to due to newer holes where shouldn't be any…

Okay, I will take your idea as a plan. Although I would still love to see some evidence that "... the laptop was already designed for the best airflow possible." Apple is known to make computers with fascinatingly bad and very wrong cooling. Remember the 2006 White iMacs?

I would recommend you install a good temperature monitoring app like TG Pro it will allow you to monitor both your temps and fans.

FYI - I service a large quantity of MacBook Pro's. Unless you are over stressing the system running heavy graphical games you shouldn't be encountering heat issues if the system is in good working order.

Laptops are not desktops! Sometimes I find people are expecting more that the system was designed to do. With that said ,we still get in a system thats running hot and cleaning the system of dust and if its one of the older models redoing the thermal paste. In many a case the HD cable also needs to be replaced. Sometimes malware and adware or other odd app can also cause problems. backing up and re-installing a fresh copy of OS & original source apps cleans that up.

I have not needed to alter the design of the system to improve its cooling other than the standard TLC a laptop often needs (Windows or Mac).